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THE MISSION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 







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Thursday Morning, June 1st 




II . J E F F E IX Y. I). D. 



PHI LAD EL PUT A: 

HKYSON & SON, PRINTERS AND STATIONERS, No. 8 NORTH SIXTH STREET. 

1865. 




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THE MISSION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 






PREACHED BEFORE THE 



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Thursday Mornins, June 1st, 1865. 






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PHILADELPHIA: 

BRTSON & SON, PRINTERS AND STATIONERS, No. 8 NORTH SIXTH STREET. 

1865. 






Rev. R. Jeffery, J). D. 

Dear Sir : — We, the subscribers, joining in the 
general wish of your congregation, earnestly request for publication 
a copy of your able Discourse on the " Mission of Abraham Lincoln" 
delivered in the Fourth Baptist Church, June 1st, — the day of our 
National Fast. 

Yours truly, 
Geo. Snyder, A. English, 

Thomas Morgan, Asa Jones, , 
Robert Phares, Wm. Bouker, 
A. G. Hines, John Loutey, 

Henry Beagle, H. L. Hallowell, 
L. B. Crosby, Alfred Hallowell, 

E. Gr. Dalton, R. N. Pratt. 

Wm. H. Longcope, 

Philadelphia, June 2d, 1865. 



Philadelphia, Juno 2d, 1865. 

Geo. Snyder, Thos. Morgan, 

Robert Phares, A. G. Hines, and others. 

Gentlemen : — In response to your kind request, I place 

my manuscript at your disposal. 

Yours truly, 

R. Jeffery. 



THE MISSION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



.• WHO KNOWETH WHETHER THOU ART COME TO THE KIXGDOM FOR SUCH A 
TIME AS THIS /"-ESTHER, It. 14. 

We meet to-day in accordance with the Proclama- 
tion of the Chief Magistrate, in order to commemorate 
the death of the late President of the United States. 
This appointment as a formal and official recognition 
of such an important event is eminently appropriate ; 
yet as a means of attesting our respect for the office 
of the deceased, of expressing our esteem for his per- 
sonal character, or of manifesting our horror at " the 
deep damnation of his taking off," this service was 
needless. All these have been done already. The 
grief at the event was too universal, too irrepressible, 
to wait the process of a formal expression. The spon- 
taneous sorrow of a great nation could admit of no 
restraint. The body of Abraham Lixcoln has been 
followed to the grave by twenty millions of mourners ; 
his character has been eulogized by the pulpit and 
the press of the entire land ; his virtues have been 
acknowledged by the unaffected sorrow of the civilized 
world ; his memory is enshrined in the hearts of all 
good men ; and his name is bequeathed to us, a legacy 
of goodness and of greatness forever. 

What, therefore, remains to be said now ? To what 
new emotion can we appeal ? And how is it possible 
by any present expression to intensify the sincerity 
of our sorrow, or the genuineness of our love ? Yet 
the occasion of the hour affords an ample theme for 



profitable contemplation. The death of Abraham 
Lincoln deserves to be commemorated, not simply 
because he was the incumbent of the highest office in 
the gift of a great nation, not merely because his per- 
sonal traits won the affections of the good and inspired 
the confidence of all, but specially because he seems 
to have been called by the Providence of God to 
achieve an important mission, and because he faith- 
fully discharged the trust committed to him. Con- 
fessedly his administration has been one of peculiar 
importance, and is destined to exert a momentous and 
lasting influence upon the future of our own country 
and the civilization of mankind. And " whoso is wise 
will observe these things and discern" a providential 
purpose in bringing Abraham Lincoln to the Presi- 
dency at such a time as that which marked the epoch 
of his administration. 

I am aware that it is a delicate, and indeed a pre- 
sumptuous task, to infer the special designs of God, 
from the peculiarity of human affairs. Those affairs 
themselves are ordinarily so incomplete, occupy so 
small a place in the great drama of His unfolding 
providences, are so interlinked with events that go 
before and that follow after, and we ourselves are so 
limited in vision, and so easily biased by partisan 
sympathies, that an attempt to interpret the purposes 
of God in current events, is often a pitiable illustra- 
tion of the vanity of our imaginings, and a proof of 
our inability "by searching to find out God." 

But in the events which make up the administration 
of our lamented President, God has revealed himself. 
He has transcribed his secret purposes to the pages 
of our national history, has written his will in char- 



acters of blood, and in letters so plain that he who 
runs may read. He has shone forth from the darkness 
of his pavillion. " Out of the heavens he has made us 
to hear a voice, that he might instruct us." ::: " The 
Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eves of all 
the nations; and all the ends of the earth have seen 
the salvation of our Grod."f To-day, we are not called 
to peer into the uncertain future, but to study the 
accomplished past. We are not at a loss to know 
what the end of these things will be, for the things 
undertaken have been performed. The results of 
four years of internecine war are now distinct, accom- 
plished, and inevitable facts. We now know that 



" Behind a frowning providence 
God hid a smiling face;" 

for he has caused those clouds 

"To break, 
With blessings on our head." 

And therefore in the light of accomplished facts, we 
may, without presumption, interpret the designs of 
God in permitting the late events to take place. It 
was the design of God to accomplish the things which 
have been accomplished. It was his design to accom- 
plish them in the manner in which they have been 
accomplished. It was his design to accomplish them 
by the agent by whom they were accomplished. The 
purpose of God has been fulfilled. Abraham Lincoln 
was called to the kingdom at such a time in order to 
perform it. God specially raised him up and qualified 
him for this self same purpose. He did not intend 
that he should die until his work was finished, and 
He did not intend that he should live after it was done. 

* Deut. iv. 36. f Isaiah, lii. 10. 



Let us illustrate aud confirm these positions by con- 
sidering, 

I. The manifest results of such a time as marked the 
administration of our departed President. 

I. In the first place we have a confirmation of 
the status of our American Nationality. Hitherto its 
character has been undetermined and problematical. 
The past ninety years of our history have been embryotic 
and formative. The founders of our nation wisely agree- 
ing and providentially led to accept events only as they 
unfolded themselves, did not attempt to bring up the 
actual condition of the nation to the ideal standard which 
many of them had formed of true national life. In the 
Declaration of Independence they simply intimated their 
conceptions of the genius and spirit of a right govern- 
ment. But their initiation of an attempt at achieving 
the independence of the colonies from foreign control, was 
the first necessary and practicable step in attaining it. 
Leaving all questions concerning the structure of a new 
government in abeyance, the colonies at first simply 
combined in the endeavor to secure to each and all, the 
right to govern themselves. Had they before-hand 
undertaken to unite upon a plan of government, and pro- 
posed a revolution as a means of effecting it, it is 
probable that differences of opinion regarding abstract 
theories would have become so positive, as to have 
rendered even a union for the purpose of gaining their 
independence, impracticable. 

But after the independence of the colonies was accom- 
plished, the next great question which naturally pre- 
sented itself, was as to the kind of compact by which the 



colonies should be associated together. The time, how- 
ever, for the adoption of ultimate views had not then 
come. But agreeing in the conviction that the welfare 
of all concerned would be better promoted by some sort 
of association, however imperfect, than by the issolated 
independency of each, a compact was agreed upon, by 
which they became known, thenceforth, as The United 
States of America. A few years, however, sufficed to 
convince all that the Articles of Confederation were too 
loose, too indefinite, and too inefficient to constitute the 
basis of a permanent and progressive nationality. They 
left each State at liberty to withdraw from the compact 
at pleasure, and gave to no centralized foim of authority, 
power to enforce obedience- to the General Government. 

This exigency was met by the subsequent adoption of 
the present Constitution, whose object is avowed in its 
own terms : " We, the People of the United States, in 
order to form a more perfect Union, Sfc, do ordain and 
establish this Constitution of the United States." 

Since that time until the present, the subtile forces of 
two opposite elements of organization have been at work 
in the formation of the character of the American nation. 
Embarrassment and conflict have arisen in the various 
attempts to define and prescribe their separate, and yet 
harmonious spheres of action. The difficulty has been 
in endeavoring to adjust the relations of the several States 
to the General Government. 

Learning from the examples of the old world to dread 
centralization of power, desirous of retaining that orginal 
sovereignty which each State enjoyed in the achievement 
of its colonial independence, our fathers were disposed to 
allow only so much power to the General Government 



8 

as was needful for the preservation of the Union. And 
concessions, even for this purpose, were cautiously and 
guardedly bestowed. • And events which for a long time 
followed, have tended to give popularity and power to 
the doctrine of State Rights, until now it has come to be 
accepted as an axiom in American politics, guarantied 
by the Constitution, confirmed by successive Admin- 
istrations, and reaffirmed by the popular sentiment, that 
each State is indisputably and sacredly sovereign in all 
those things that are local to itself, and that do not con- 
flict with the express provisions of the Constitution. 
This view is not a sentiment ; it is not an abstraction ; 
it is not a philosophy ; it is an actuality in the character 
of American nationality. . All the preceding events of 
our history have conspired to educate the people into the 
conception, acceptance and defence of this declaration. 
So that now it would be impossible to bring the American 
people to consent to any infringement on the smallest 
constitutional right of a State. 

And yet the doctrine of State Rights, like the centri- 
fugal force in nature, needful in its place, if left to its 
unrestrained action, would drive the State off from its orbit 
and involve the whole structure of the Government in 
anarchy. While it was needful to guard the General 
Government from any encroachment on the rights of a 
State, it was never intended to give to any one State, nor 
to a combination of States, the right and power to encroach 
on the rights of all the States, or to deprive the General 
Government of the powers to preserve unbroken, the or- 
ganic unity of the United States. It was not-designed to 
allow a State to withdraw from the Union at its own sov- 
ereign pleasure. And the events of the last four years 



have settled it beyond all controversy, that no State can 
withdraw from the Union. So that now we present the 
sublime spectacle of an organic and unique nationality. 
The United States is not a congerie of independencies, but 
one American State. Controlled by one central source 
of unity, and distributed into so many sections for local 
development, the United States of America forms a 
unique and glorious system of stars, each describing its 
own orbit, all revolving round one common centre ; each 
reflecting a distinct radiance, and all lit up by a common 
sun. It constitutes a galaxy of nations in one national- 
ity, indestructible by assault and indissoluble by secession. 
Now, heretofore, one phase of the national life was 
an actuality ; the other was a problem. Other nations 
knew that the sovereignty of the States was an accepted 
thesis in American politics, but neither they nor our- 
selves were agreed as to the possibility, or method of 
harmonizing this fact with the sovereignty of the Gen- 
eral Government. Many profound thinkers had pro- 
nounced the adjustment impossible, and predicted the 
destruction of the Republic by the encroachments of 
State demands on the central authority, or the annihila- 
tion of the rights of a State by the usurpations of the 
National Government. 

It has been so ordered that this question has been settled 
by the adjudication of the sword. All other issues were 
incidental to this grand issue. The right of a State to 
secede was affirmed ; the right of a State to secede was 
denied. The decision was left to the dread arbitrament 
of war. The result is the triumph of the national sover- 
eignty, not over State rights, but over State assump- 
tions. Henceforth it is decreed, that grievances arising 
2 



10 

within the Union, must be settled within the Union. 
Yet, notwithstanding the successful assertion of the 
National supremacy, the sovereignty of the States is 
unimpaired. The war was not needful to curtail the 
constitutional rights of a State, but to define and en- 
force them ; not to make the sovereignty of the State 
less, but the supremacy of the Nation more. Heretofore 
some extremists have boasted that they were citizens of a 
particular State of the United States ; henceforth the 
glory of an American will be that though a resident of 
a particular State, he is a citizen of the United States. 

2. But the war has not merely defined the genius of 
American Nationality. It has also demonstrated the 
practicability of American Republicanism. The struc- 
ture of our Government is complex. It is not a simple 
democracy, any more than it is a simple oligarchy. It is 
a composite of these apparently conflicting elements, and 
forms a resultant that is distinct from both. This we 
call Republicanism. It is a democracy, because every 
citizen has a vote in the choice of officers, and in the de- 
termination of policies. It is an oligarchy, because the 
people are bound to obey the constitutional enactments 
of their chosen rulers. 

But the success of such Government was an experi- 
ment. It had never been fairly tried. There had been 
Democracies, but they had wrought out their own 
destruction ; there had been attempts to form Republics, 
but they had failed. The Monarchists of the Old World 
had predicted and hoped for the disaster of the trans- 
Atlantic experiment ; the down trodden of Europe had 
feared it, while they prayed that it might not be. The 
nationalties of Europe and Asia had succeeded in per- 



11 

petuating their organizations by exacting obedience to 
authority, by the power of brute force. They kept up 
military establishments, restrained the freedom of the 
press, and encroached on the rights of conscience. They 
said that men were not capable of self-government, and 
that a nation based on that assumption provided in the 
terms of its being for its own destruction. And among 
ourselves, there have been sincere men who apprehended 
that the people might be unequal to the task of enforcing 
themselves to obedience to the laws of their constituted 
rulers ; while bad men have not hesitated to avail them- 
selves of this possibility, in order to ensure the Nation's 
overthrow. 

Thus it has come to pass, that for years, a restless, tur- 
bulent and ambitious portion of our own people have 
clamored for favors, and demanded privileges, while 
others, actuated by a love of peace, and fearing the threats 
of rebellion and secession, have weakly and wickedly 
yielded to these insolent demands, until those who made 
them beo-an to imagine themselves the autocrats of the 
nation, and their brethren and equals mercenary vassals, 
— men, who for the pottage of commercial gain, were 
willing to sell their freedom and the sovereignty of the 
nation. 

But evidently this way of preserving the Union was a 
confession of its weakness and a precursor of its ruin. 
It invited combinations for the usurpation of power, and 
encouraged conspiracies for the destruction of liberty. 
And accordingly it was coming to appear, that every 
boasted right of American citizenship was being sacri- 
ficed on the altar of pitiful and dishonorable compro- 
mises. When the dominations of an imposing aristocracy 



12 

said that freedom of speech was inimical to its interests, 
American freemen were muzzled. When it demanded 
that requited labor should not be tolerated on its domain, 
American freemen were compelled to look elsewhere for 
homes. When it said that its interests required the occu- 
pancy of the unoccupied territories, American citizens 
who settled therein in defiance of their schemes, were ex- 
pelled, imprisoned, or shot And finally, when the assump- 
tion, rendered audacious by its success, maintained that 
its local interests were entitled to universal supremacy, 
to which every other interest was subordinate, it was 
seriously attempted to induce the freemen of America to 
vote themselves the vassals of the arrogant pretension. 
And what was the plea by which this base subserviency 
was urged X The preservation of the Union ! ! If these 
demands are not met by concessions, the Union will be 
destroyed ! ! 

Now, it is possible to urge and gain measures by in- 
timidations of this kind up to a certain point. Most 
men are disposed to be peaceful, and are willing to make 
considerable compromises for the sake of their interests ; 
but it is possible to demand the surrender of principles 
that are more sacred than interests, and to threaten until 
self-respect is a stronger force than love of peace. Be- 
sides the intimidation was itself a two-edged sword. If it 
were practicable and desirable for one party to secede if 
its demands were not granted, it began to be questioned 
whether it would not be likewise desirable and practi- 
cable for the other party to secede if these demands were 
granted. So that the very process of the discussion of 
such an alternative, was educating the nation to estimate 
the value of the Republic in the scales of profit and loss, 



13 

and to overlook that great and eternal fact which God 
has made to inhere in the simplest structure of Govern- 
ment. The fundamental idea of Government is Law — 
law promulgated, law enforced. Any Government that 
has not authority to enforce the obedience of its subjects 
to the demands of its laws, is incapable of preserving 
itself from destruction ; and if that Government be Re- 
publican, it must necessarily prove and maintain its per- 
petuity by demonstrating the willingness of the people 
to obey their own laws, and their readiness to co-operate 
in compelling to submission, the turbulent and unruly. ' 
Any organization that cannot maintain its authority over 
its own members, may be an association, it may be a 
compact, it may be a society, but it is not a Government. 
Governments are ordained of God. Obedience to their 
authority is obedience to God, and rebellion against them 
is rebellion against God. And the disregard by a free 
people of these fundamental facts, is more than a mis- 
take or a blunder. It is self-repudiation. It is national 
suicide. 

The existence of a wide spread and terrible rebellion, 
and the exigencies of the Government in attempting to 
put it down, have conspired to evoke and test the sin- 
cerity and strength of the people's regard for the sanctity 
of law. It was possible for the people to have refused 
its assent to the proposition of the executive to put down 
the rebellion. It was possible for them to have refuse 
to volunteer or to be conscripted. It was possible for 
them to have withheld supplies. It was possible for them 
to have decreed still further compromises, to have ordered 
an armistice and to have recognized the independence of 
the traitors. And throughout the progress of the conflict, 



14 

there have not been wanting those who were ready to 
urge such a base surrender of the majesty of a great 
people to the behests of rebellion. But nobly, gloriously 
did the people sustain the Executive in its measures to 
uphold the authority of the law, and preserve the dignity 
and integrity of the nation. No sacrifice of treasure or 
of blood was deemed too costly for the preservation of 
the Republic, and no settlement was deemed admissible 
that did not assert the supreme authority of the Con- 
stitution and the Laws. 

And do you not see, that if the people had willed 
otherwise ; if by a resort to compromises and concessions 
the war had been brought to a close, even though the 
Union had been preserved thereby, that the result would 
have been accomplished by the surrender of the high 
dignity of the national authority, and have been regarded 
by other nations as a disgraceful confession of the in- 
ability of American Republicanism, to enforce the obedi- 
ence of its citizens to their own laws'? It would have 
proclaimed that in this country, obedience to authority 
is optional, rebellion is a political trick, and treason is a 
reserved prerogative of minorities. 

It has been said, and that too by men whose states- 
manship we are wont to respect, that revolution even in 
a Republican Government is the right of a minority. 
But this position we venture to deny. It is a contradic- 
tion in terms and an absurdity in conception. Such a 
right only belongs to the oppressed subjects of a Mon- 
archy or irresponsible Oligarchy. But in a Republic 
the majority must rule ; the minority must submit. The 
minority may discuss, may agitate, may piotest, may 
revolutionize popular sentiment, but revolutionize the 



15 

Government, it must not. Grant that it may, and every 
minority might claim the right of revolution. Resistance 
of it would be tyranny, and its success would be the over- 
throw of the Republican principle. 

During the progress of the conflict, we were told that 
this war was an attempt on the part of the North to sub- 
jugate the South, and were assured that the South could 
never be subjugated. The first of these assertions was 
a falsehood, the second, an empty boast. The issue 
has not been between the North and the South, but 
between national authority and rebellion. In conquer- 
ing the South, we have not subjugated one section of the 
country to the domination of another, but have demon- 
strated the grand fact, that this Republic is able to vin. 
dicate and maintain the majesty of its authority against 
rebellion, whether that rebellion arise in the South or 
the North, in the East or the West. 

A few years ago, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave 
Law, — a law, odious to the moral convictions of the great 
body of the northern people. And yet, the North did 
not propose to rebel. And if any portion of their people 
had undertaken to inaugurate a rebellion, not only would 
the National Government have been bound to enforce 
the authority of the law, but every loyal man would have 
given to the Government his cordial support; not because 
he approved of the law, but because the Constitution is 
the supreme law of the land ; because the constitution- 
ality of any measure could be tested by an appeal to the 
recognized tribunal; because submission to an unjust law 
is a less sin than the overthrowing of the Government 
for the sake of evading the law ; and because subjection 
to the powers that be is an ordinance of the Almighty, 



16 

which no thesis of Republicanism, no pretext of De- 
mocracy, can set aside without incurring the highest 
guilt of rebellion " against the throne and monarchy of 
God." 

But to-day and henceforth, the ability of this Republic 
to maintain its authority against the assaults of rebellion, 
is a demonstrated fact. All those delicate questions 
which affected the reaching of this consummation are 
settled for all time. And the people have now learned, 
that the proper way in which to prevent and subdue a 
rebellion, is not to propose compromises with traitors, 
but to insist on the unqualified submission of all the 
people, in all parts of the land, to the majesty of the 
Constitution and the enactments of Congress; and to 
dispose of treason not by wheedling with traitors, but 
by metiug out to them the stern demerit of their awful 
crime. 

3. A third result of this war is the Emancipation of 
Labor. It is to be regretted that in this Christian land 
there have been those who, without even the apology of 
self-interest, could argue for the righteousness of an in- 
stitution which was based on the principle of ownership 
in the manhood of man, which sold him as a beast of 
the field, which denied him a right- to the sanctities of 
marriage, which robbed woman of her chastity, and 
deprived mothers of their offspring. And even of those 
who deplored it as an evil, many were at a loss how to 
dispose of it. But it Avas so ordered in the Providence 
of God, that they who demanded concessions for the 
sake of slavery, inaugurated rebellion against the Govern- 
ment because it refused to grant them. So it came 
to pass, that in putting down the rebellion it was 



17 

found necessary to destroy its cause. God himself put 
the trumpet of his Providence to the lips of the nation, 
and bade it " proclaim liberty throughout all the land, 
and to all the inhabitants thereof." The sound went 
forth, and from that moment the smile of heaven 
rested upon our efforts. And to-day we rejoice that 
authority is restored, and that slavery is dead. Free- 
dom has been given to four millions of human beings. 
We have vindicated our declaration of the equality 
of all men. The highway of liberty is cast up for the 
redeemed nation to walk in, our victorious soldiers are 
returning with joy upon their heads, and before all the 
people is opened up a pathway of unexampled prosperity. 
For after all, to speak of the destruction of slavery, 
though itself an institution cruel to the enslaved, is 
only to state the blessing in a negative form. The aboli- 
tion of slavery was not only an act of justice to the 
slave, but, an act of justice to the freeman. For by 
reason of our sympathy with, or indifference to it, we 
were fostering amongst us an institution which came 
to us as the worst and most repugnant element of a bar- 
barous feudalism, and sought to be perpetuated as an 
essential antagonism to the law of our own national de- 
velopment. Unable to maintain a conflict with the in- 
nate force of the principles of free labor, slavery was 
compelled to make special demands in its behalf. And 
consequently, such was the illogical and suicidal policy 
it was inducing us to pursue, the Government was 
forced to make discriminations that were unjust to free 
labor and partial to slavery. Slaves exhausted territory, 
freemen cultivated it. Slavery must have more territory, 
freedom must have less. Slavery could not thrive by the 
3 



18 

side of free labor, free labor must not cross geographical 
lines except at its peril. To slavery must be guarantied 
the undisturbed possession of its prescribed territory, free 
labor must shift for itself. So that it happened, such 
evermore are the compensations of Providence, that slaves 
were the only class who held a first mortgage on the 
land, and whose homes and support were assured with- 
out effort and anxiety from themselves, by the provisions 
of the Government that enslaved them. 

Hence in destroying slavery, the nation really knocked 
off the chains from free labor, and broke down the middle 
wall of partition between free labor and the fairest por- 
tion of our vast domain. Now white men are free, free 
to traverse the length and breadth of the land, free to 
think, speak and act as becomes freemen without fear of 
lynch law, banishment or death, free to pursue any 
honorable avocation, without coming in contact with an 
institution that asserted an advantage which precluded 
the possibility of a business competition, or that pro- 
nounced the sweat of honest and requited toil, a brand of 
infamy. It is needless to speculate as to what a revolution 
of advantage and prosperity to trade, to intercourse and 
intelligence, this wondrous change must make. Already 
the advantages of free labor are beginning to be confessed 
by those who, only a short time ago, were in rebellion for 
the sake of perpetuating slavery. And only a few years 
will elapse before the wilderness of the South will 
be populated with a hardy, industrious and enlightened 
people. Their demands and necessities will react upon 
the North, to the quickening and enlarging of industry 
and commerce, to the increasing of wealth and the 
diffusion of knowledge, and to the elevating of all to 



19 

that position of prosperity and intelligence, which shall 
constitute the high argument of the folly and sin of 
slavery, and the unanswerable illustration of the supe- 
riority of that civilization which gives every man " an 
equal chance " in life, and makes requited and unre- 
stricted labor the birthright of all, and the precursor of 
individual well being and national greatness. And in 
view of these glorious results, the time is not far distant 
when the white and the black men of the South will 
join in mutual acknowledgements of gratitude and 
honor, to those who, by the sacrifice of their treasure and 
lives, disenthralled them both, and consecrated our entire 
domain to liberty, law and labor. 

II. Now in considering the agencies by which these 
grand results have been achieved, we assert that the nation 
is specially indebted to the services of our departed 
President. Four years ago, who could tell whether 
Abraham Lincoln was called to the kingdom for such 
a time as then burst upon us 1 But are any at a loss to 
answer the question now I 

1. We are able to say that he was brought to the 
kingdom for such a time, in view of the circumstances 
of his nomination and election. Though presented to 
the suffrage of the people on a distinct and new issue, 
yet it was not seriously believed by many, that his elec- 
tion would prove the occasion for raising the standard of 
revolt. And if the nomination and election of a Presi- 
dent had been with a view to such a contingency, it is 
by no means probable that the choice of the convention, 
or of the people, would have fallen upon him. He was 
an untried man. He was an unambitious man. He 



20 

did not belong to the coterie of presidential aspirants. 
And even his nomination, as it was, appears to have been 
a political resort, rendered necessary because of the in- 
ability of rival factions to unite upon any of the ac- 
knowledged candidates for the office. And when at 
length civil war came upon us, many doubted whether 
our untried President was the man for the crisis, while 
some, even of his supporters, clamored for his supersedure 
by the appointment of a dictator. But when in the light 
of the experience of more than three years of war, the 
people were called upon to choose a President for another 
term, with what unexampled unanimity did they inter- 
pret the will of God, that Abraham Lincoln had been 
called to the Presidency for such a time as this % 

Yes for just such a time as this. Suppose one of some 
of the men who have been Presidents, had been Presi- 
dent when Fort Sumpter was attacked, should we oc- 
cupy the position we hold to-day 1 Ah, no. In that 
event we might have had reason for thinking that God 
was designing to work out our destruction. But He 
was intending, not as some have said to punish us, but 
to purify and ennoble us, so he did not give us an instru- 
ment of his displeasure, but he placed over us " a man 
after his own heart." We see it now; he was defeated 
as a candidate for the office of United States Senator, 
that he might be elected President. The American 
people chose Abraham Lincoln to be their National 
President ; God chose him to be their National Saviour. 

2. In the second place, observe the general fitness of 
Abraham Lincoln for just such a time, God, when 
selecting an instrument for the accomplishment of his 
purposes, always has a regard to the law of adaptation. 



21 

The original traits of Moses qualified him to be the leader 
and law-giver of the Israelites. David was possessed of 
elements suited to the part in the kingdom of Israel he 
was called upon to act. And all the characteristics of 
Paul's nature, fitted him to be the Apostle to the Gentiles. 
And so it was in regard to Abraham Lincoln. The 
American people blundered upon him. God chose him 
with special reference to coming events. 

He entered upon untried difficulties. No precedents 
were before him : — for such a rebellion, so vast, so com- 
prehensive, so formidable, so vindictive, so contrary to 
liberty, so dishonoring to human nature, so defiant 
of the laws of Providence, against a Government, so 
generous, so just, so lenient, had never occurred in the 
history of the race. Its only counterpart, was that revolt 
among the angels against the supremacy of God. 

Now, Abraham Lincoln entered upon his perilous 
task with a profound and humble trust in the superin- 
tending Providence of God in the affairs of men. He 
seemed to feel, and without presumption or affecta- 
tion, that he was the appointed instrument for working 
out the mystery of the will of God. He did not seek to 
control events, but to be controlled by them. And yet, 
he was not a fanatic. On the contrary, he brought to 
the consideration of every question, the cautiousness and 
promptness of a well-balanced and acute mind. He was 
able to grapple with the most imposing difficulties, to 
analyze the most subtle principles, to disentangle the 
most perplexing circumstances, to reach conclusions 
with a slowness which showed his appreciation of their 
importance, to announce them with a firmness which in- 
dicated his confidence, to abide by them with an assur- 



22 

ance that his positions would bo justified by events. 
And yet, unlike a weak or vain man, he had no pride of 
opinions to preserve. He was ready to change his plans, 
to modify his measures, to retrace his steps, to own his 
mistakes and to receive advice. And withal he was 
possessed of such an honesty of purpose, that even those, 
who differed from him trusted him, and such a benevo- 
lence of heart, that his bitterest enemies were those who 
hated him because he gave them no occasion for their 
malignity. This rare combination of traits qualified and 
proved him to be the man for the time. 

3. In addition to these general traits, there were peculiar 
elements in the character of Abraham Lincoln, that 
specially proved his fitness for the Presidency at such 
a time. In the first place : He clearly comprehended 
the fundamental law of American Nationality. Some 
statesmen are like certain religionists, who, in their 
anxiety to model their church organizations after the 
pattern of the New Testament, confound the formative 
with the normal condition of the primitive church, and 
insist that some of its incipient elements were ultimate 
principles. But Abraham Lincoln, saw that the past 
of our national history was only a period of assimilation 
and development, and that the organic and essential idea 
of our nationality could only be asserted and received 
when the logic of events demonstrated its consummation. 
In the exigencies of civil war, our nationality attained a 
symmetry -and concentration of its several forces, which 
proved that its organic law was unity, and that the operation 
of its parts was not the action of confederated agencies, but 
the expansion and development of an organic entity. 
Hence, in the beginning of the war he asserted the im- 



23 

possibility of the division and dissolution of the Union, 
because of the essential unity which inhered in the law 
of its being. 

Secondly: He clearly understood the nature of the 
issue involved in the contest. Men of narrow views have 
ascribed this war to the bitterness of sectional hate, but 
wiser men saw that it was the action of an inevitable 
conflict between opposing systems of civilization. And, 
with a characteristic sententiousness he applied to it the 
aphorism of the Saviour, " ' A house divided against 
itself cannot stand.' I believe this Government cannot 
endure permanently, half slave and half free. I do not 
expect the house to fall ; but I do expect it will cease to 
be divided. It will become all one thing or the other." 
Accordingly from the first he entertained no sympathy 
with compromises with slavery. It would not admit of 
compromises. It had broken all previous ones, and made 
new and encroaching demands. Abraham Lincoln 
saw that if this process went on, the nation would become 
k ' all slave," and that freedom would become an outcast 
from its last asylum. 

Again : His early training had impressed him with a 
high sense of the dignity and value of labor. While 
many young men of his age thought it manly to affect 
a gentility which exhausts itself in smoking cigars, 
drinking wine, aping exquisite fashions, playing the 
gallant to silly girls, Abraham Lincoln was clearing 
up the Western forest, felling trees, ploughing around 
stumps, splitting rails, and navigating flat-boats on the 
waters of the Ohio and Mississippi. Thus his sympathy 
with toil was genuine. He knew its disadvantages, its 
needs, and its glory ; and his experience was intensified 



24 

by personal and constant observation of the unjust 
discriminations which the feudalism of the slave system 
imposed upon free labor. As God trained David to 
be king while in his father's sheep-folds, so he was 
fitting Abraham Lincoln, in this rugged, simple, sturdy 
Western life, to be the coming man, who should give 
freedom to a race and salvation to a nation. 

Still further : Abraham Lincoln had a nature which 
was intuitively actuated by the impulses of a broad phi- 
lanthropy. In the narrow, technical sense of the word, 
he was not an abolitionist. He was not specially and 
exclusively a friend of the negro. He loved the human 
race. He believed in the brotherhood of man, and allowed 
no differences in constitution, color, culture or country, 
to commit him to unjust discriminations against the 
manhood of man. He sought to make every man better 
and happier. He delighted in opportunities to sympathise 
with the suffering and the sorrowing. Arid in smooth- 
ing the pillow of a dying soldier, in listening to the griefs 
of a stricken mother, in helping a little boy, in giving a 
smile or word of cheer to an aged negro, or in search- 
ing for the nest of a fallen bird, Abraham Lincoln gave 
as true an expression of his simple and full-hearted 
benevolence, and experienced a pleasure as genuine as 
when he signed the Proclamation of Emancipation. 

So that, while he met the issues of this great conflict, 
with a firmness that did not flinch, and a justice that 
did not yield to intimidation, he resisted rebellion with- 
out resentment, he endured detraction without impa- 
tience, punished treason without cruelty, emancipated a 
race without vanity, and carried the nation unto victory 
without arrogance. And when all these things were 



25 

done, " with charity for all and malice towards none," he 
at once turned towards his deluded and disappointed 
countrymen, not to triumph over their mortification, but 
to assure them of the sincerity of a brother's love. 

4. Finally : The special Providence of God in the ad- 
ministration of Abraham Lincoln, is seen in the circum- 
stances and time of his death. The slave demon was 
not to be conciliated by the overtures of goodness. The 
same spirit which had for centuries fed on cruelties, and 
which sought to gain its present ends by perverting the 
plainest truths, by subjecting captured soldiers to tor 
tures that transcended the barbarisms of the ages, and by 
flaunting defiance in the face of God's clearest Provi 
dences, true to its instincts, could not die without strik- 
ing: its envenomed fans: into the heel of the man who 
had struck its head. But in this, slavery overreached 
itself. It not only did not save itself, but it consecrated 
the name of its destroyer to freedom, and freedom to 
the future generations of mankind. 

Men have regretfully wondered why Abraham Lin- 
coln was not spared to finish the work he had under- 
taken. They forget themselves. He had finished it. 
Attempts to assassinate him had been made before ; but 
they had failed. His hour had not come ; his work was 
not completed. It was decreed that the fourteenth day 
of April, 1865, should be an era in the annals of history, 
an epoch in the cycles of time, the Good Friday of 
American Redemption. Four years before, on that very 
day, rebellion committed its first overt act. It fired on 
the American flag that floated over Fort Sumpter. Four 
years had elapsed, — years of carnage, of cruelties, of hopes 
and fears ; but all this time what moral changes were 



26 

going on ! The genius of the American nationality was 
developing itself. Republicanism was proving its vitality. 
A race of slaves was being made free, and a nation of 
freemen was being brought up to the measure of their 
high vocation, in deeds of unexampled sacrifices, wond- 
rous charities, valiant courage and enlightened justice. 
God permitted the rebellion to be strong enough and 
blind enough, to last long enough, to exhaust itself and 
die. So that just at the end of four years to the very 
day, the flag that was shot clown from Fort Sumpter was 
restored to its place, the proud symbol of a restored, dis- 
enthralled and victorious nationality. 

This done, and the mission of Abraham Lincoln was 
accomplished. And strange, marvellous coincidence ! 
On that very day, not in the morning before the Stars 
and Stripes had been raised over Sumpter, but in the 
evening, after the glorious deed was done, Abraham Lin- 
coln received his summons to resign his trust. He had 
done his work. He had done it well. And the universal 
verdict of mankind is the counterpart of the Divine award, 
" Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into 
the joy of thy Lord." 

Besides, the manner of his death is another element 
in the speciality of his calling. If his death had occurred 
from natural causes, his character would have been no 
less genuine, his work no less complete, our regrets no 
less sincere, but it would have lacked that finish which 
was needed to give uniqueness to his mission and effect 
to his life. Slavery wanted a victim. Liberty needed 
a martyr. Despairing of destroying the life of the nation, 
in its dying frenzy slavery took the life of the nation's 
preserver. But it little thought that in this it was 



27 

answering the purpose of God. Jewish hate gave to 
the world a Redeemer ; slaveholding malignity gave to 
Liberty a Martyr. 

Now we know why Abraham Lincoln lived, why he 
was made the President of the United States, why he 
was re-elected for a second term, why he lived out only 
so small a portion of that second term, why he did not 
die sooner, why he did not live longer. The work to 
which he was called required the lapse of just four 
years for its accomplishment, On the fourteenth day 
of April, 1861, Slavery, vigorous and defiant, struck 
down the American flag ; on the fourteenth day of April, 
1865, Slavery, dying and damned, struck down the 
American President. But the rebellion was crushed, 
slavery destroyed, and the nation redeemed. The fifteenth 
day of April dawned upon a new era in our national exist- 
ence. The sun as it rose that morning, gazed for the 
first time upon our nation radiant in its new-born liberty, 
joyous in its assured integrity, and jubilant in the pros- 
pects of its opening career of prosperity and peace. The 
spirit of Abraham lingered just long enough on earth to 
cross the line of the dispensation, " when the chariot and 
the horsemen thereof" came down and took him from 
the scenes of his toil to the rest and reward of heaven. 
It was expedient that he should die, and that he should 
die for the nation. It was fitting that his blood should 
mingle with that of the thousands who had fallen before 
him. It was fitting that he lived to cross the boundary 
of our Canaan, for now his grave is the monument of 
our transition, and his " soul marching along," in the 
carreer of our progress, is the inspiration of our hopes, the 
guardian of our liberties, and the harbinger our destiny. 



28 

As he stood on the battle-field of Gettysburg with 
graves of the fallen brave around him, he used these 
memorable words: "We cannot dedicate, we cannot 
consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave 
men who struggled here have consecrated it, far beyond 
our power to add or detract. The world will little note, 
nor long remember what we say here, but it can never 
forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather 
to be dedicated to the unfinished work which they who 
fought here have so nobly advanced. It is rather for us 
to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before 
us, that from these honored dead we take increased de- 
votion to that cause for which they gave the last full 
measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that 
these dead shall not have died in vain ; that this nation, 
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that 
Government of the people, by the people, and for the 
people, shall not perish from the earth." 

So say we to-day. Let the death of our great and 
good President consecrate us, to the realization in our- 
selves of the spirit which animated him. Let us dedi- 
cate ourselves to keeping that which he has given us. 
Let us forget past differences. Let us hate slavery. 
Let us love freedom. Let us honor labor. Let us re- 
spect the rights of the humblest and weakest and meanest 
of God's creatures. Let us go on to fulfill the mission 
to which God has called us of being the model of a pure 
and ennobling civilization. Let us prove worthy of 
Abraham Lincoln. 



